Hi all,
I am a trained aquatic ecologist gone interdisciplinary finishing up my PhD in fall. I'll be presenting a conference poster on the qualitative semi-structured interview section of my dissertation research. I used a thematic analysis using a mix of expected and emergent codes. I've been checking out examples online of good poster layouts, but would love to hear tips or see examples of how to make a good qualitative poster.I am especially concerned about the poster being too wordy. What sort of visuals would you suggest?
Thanks in advance!
Dear Kirsten Hecht
Here is an example - it doesn't quite eliminate the inherent problem of being 'too wordy', but it might help to show how to 'live with it'.
Conference Paper Open borders for eye health education
Nyawira Mwangi Thank you for sharing this example. I found it useful and also enjoyed reading about your interesting work as a bonus. I like how you laid out the results and can see how I could adapt something like that to my work.
I am a qualitative researcher too, and I use semi-structured interview and thematic analysis. My experience is that visualization is the key. Try to use as much figures and tables as possible.
The guidance/illustrations as per the following papers may further help:
- Block, S. M. (1996) Do's and Don'ts of Poster Presentation, Biophysical Journal, 71, 6, pp. 3527-3529.
- Erren, T. C. and Bourne, P. E. (2007) Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation, Public Library of Science Computational Biology, 3, 5, pp. 777-778.
- Halligan, P. (2008) Poster presentations: Valuing all forms of evidence, Nurse Education in Practice, 8, 1, pp. 41-45.
- Miller, J. E. (2007) Preparing and Presenting Effective Research Posters, Health Services Research, 42, 1, pp. 311-328.
- Moneyham, L., Ura, D., Ellwood, S. and Bruno, B. (1996) The Poster Presentation as an Educational Tool, Nurse Educator, 21, 4, pp. 45-47.
- Shelledy, D. C. (2004) How to Make an Effective Poster, Respiratory care, 49, 10, pp. 1213-1216.
- Sherbinski, L. A. and Stroup, D. R. (1992) Developing a poster for disseminating research findings, American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Journal, 60, 6, pp. 567-577.
I am also a PhD candidate who used qualitative thematic analysis and have struggled with presenting qualitative work. I have found if I can come up with a visual idea as a starting point, it made the task a lot easier and I was happy with the final poster e.g. the way my participants were talking about attaining care from GPs, was like a game of snakes and ladders, which led me to use a board game as the basis of my poster (attached). Aim to trim your quotes and text down to the bare minimum. Provide links or handouts that can contain more detailed information, for those who have a deeper interest in your work . If you are having the poster printed, the colours in the digital file may not translate when printed so ask for advice from the printers. Good luck!
Kenneth Lui-ming Ngie Thank you for sharing. None of the ones I could access seem to specifically discuss displaying qualitative data which is what I'm interested in. I am very familiar with making posters in general, which has evolved quite a bit since many of these articles were written, but representing qualitative data in a poster is a very different challenge than making graphs and figures of quantitative results.
Scarborough Jane thank you for sharing your work! These are really fun and engaging posters.
Hi!
Please check out my Research Gate profile, I have several posters that you can access - they are all qualitative research. With experience, my most recent posters are becoming less wordy which is difficult but attainable (these are not yet online because they will soon be presented at conferences)! Because of my study population, I find it important to use participants' quotes to illustrate the data rather than paraphrase findings.
Also, I recommend using a big box entitled : TAKE HOME MESSAGE which summarizes neatly THE KEY POINT that you want your poster to drive home.
Another strategy to increase space is to exclude references from the poster and have hand-outs with the references to give to persons who view your poster. If you choose this style, you should have a sentence at the bottom of your poster saying that references are available upon request. This is a style and personal preference suggestion.
I can send you a recent poster draft if you would like! PM me if you wish.
I hope this helps!
Lynne
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